Yowls of Evil and Darkness and Random acts of Vandalism
by Omnicat
Summary: Something is rattling around Loki's meticulously planned and executed funhouse of horrors that shouldn't be. Surely he and Jane won't be facing a real supernatural menace right before the Avengers' Halloween party, of all things?


**Title:** Yowls of Evil and Darkness and Random acts of Vandalism

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** Marvel Studios' _Thor_ -relevant movies, as many or as few as you feel like.

 **Warnings:** None.

 **Characters & Relationships:** Loki x Jane

 **Summary:** Something is rattling around Loki's meticulously planned and executed funhouse of horrors that shouldn't be. Surely he and Jane won't be facing a real supernatural menace right before the Avengers' Halloween party, of all things? **/ 1700 words**

 **Author's Note:** Enjoy!

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 **Yowls of Evil and Darkness and Random acts of Vandalism**

"Did you do this on purpose?" Jane asked.

"No," Loki answered.

"Is it somehow your fault anyway?"

"Why, I would never –" he started, making his most affronted face.

Jane rolled her eyes. "Thanks for at least being obvious, if you're not gonna be honest."

"You're welcome," Loki said, faux-outrage melting away into a beatific smile.

"You're ridiculous." She rattled the doorknob again. "Will you melt if you're honest too many times in a day?"

"I just might."

She shot him a sly look. "Do you think I'm pretty?"

A beat.

"Ooooh, you clever, wicked woman," he said admiringly. "You're a wretched minx, is what I think you are."

She cackled, and he drew her to him to silence her with a kiss. It stopped the sound of her laughter but not the spirit; her shoulders shook under his hands.

"Seriously though," she said when they broke apart. " _Why_ can't you open the door?"

"I've enchanted it to not open for anyone until they've completed the entire course. Breaking the spell now would ruin all my preparations for tonight. I hadn't realized the door's hinges were crooked. Such a thing would never have –"

"Don't say it."

"– happened in an Asgardian dwelling," he finished, and Jane's eyes all but rolled from her skull. Feeling magnanimous, he added: "That said, we chose to rent this house for a reason, and its decrepit state _is_ thematically appropriate."

She sighed curtly and pointedly. "Fine. We'll look for the source of a bunch of creepy noises along a dimly lit, magically booby-trapped route through a centuries-old mansion. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Exactly! Nothing at all," Loki said.

With a hand at the small of her rigid back, he led Jane down the corridor. This would be his first time celebrating her mortal holy day of Halloween, and already he had outdone most others who had observed the festivities for years, if he did say so himself. This holiday was made for him. Nigh on all the fun trappings of villainy with none of the pesky consequences, a hearty spike in appreciation of his jests and magical prowess, an excuse to indulge his sweet tooth...

"It was clean when we got here," Jane told herself, eyeing the massive spider webs he had conjured along the walls. "It was clean when we got here. _That_ –" she said, pointing. "That spider is fake, right? You didn't import a _real_ spider the size of my head from some other realm, did you?"

"It is a mere imitation," he assured her.

"Okay. How sure are you you didn't get sloppy somewhere, and that's what caused the sounds?"

"Absolutely certain."

"Should've brought my umbrella," she muttered. Twisting his wrist with a flash of magic, he handed the object in question to her. Amazingly, that actually caused her tense muscles to relax beneath his touch. "Thanks."

"You doubt my ability to protect you," he accused.

"No, I just don't like leaving my safety _entirely_ in someone else's hands, especially when that someone is highly likely to –"

A skeleton burst from the bedroom door in front of them, looked both ways for the intruders that had awoken it, whirled on them, and pointed one bony finger with a triumphant gnashing squeal of _'Aha!'_

Jane shrieked and smashed its head from its shoulders with her umbrella.

A moment of stunned silence fell. Then the skeleton's hands felt around in the air where its skull had been, and it let out a cry of dismay and started running around in circles, babbling in almost-words about where its head had gone.

"I admit, when I prepared my creations for the possibility of violent retaliation, I expected the big, Thor-like brutes would be the ones smashing things," Loki said cheerfully.

"Loki," Jane said, voice tight with seething adrenaline as she lowered her weapon. "Be a dear and check that room for me."

In that moment, she was exquisite. He and Jane had decided on costumes for tonight's party by letting the other dress them in a distinctive style native to their respective realms. Jane had stuck him in a black leather jacket and tight-fitting denims with freshly-cut and strangely-slicked hair. He had garbed Jane in a gown fit for a queen, a deep green with hems jewelled in all the shades of the forest and a star-studded golden cloak. She looked every inch the warrior and princess. Even her spotted blue umbrella did not take away from her fierce beauty and regal elegance.

Now there was a thought he'd never imagined he'd entertain.

"With pleasure, my fair maiden of the rain-shield," he said with a bow, and darted into the bedroom before she could make good on the threatening twitch of her umbrella. When he emerged again, she had befriended the skeleton and was trying to help it put its head back on.

"Nothing out of place in here," he reported. "And that's not going to work. Leave it be, it'll sort itself out once we've moved out of range."

"Sorry," Jane told the thing, and followed after Loki. "Next time, _warn me_ ," she demanded.

"No, please, stab the vampire lurking around the third corner, I insist."

She eyed the fog that rose there as they approached warily, but did not, in fact, stab the vampire that materialized amidst it. Sighing, Loki flashed a dagger into existence and did it himself. With a theatrical wail, it exploded in a cloud of glitter that covered everything in a nine foot radius.

Jane straightened from her defensive cringe, blinked her eyes open, looked around and down at herself, and gaped. "Oh my god, that's just evil. It's going to get _everywhere_."

Loki beamed.

Checking rooms and closets everywhere they went, they made their way along the swamp hallway, where rotting corpse-hands emerged from the muck to grab their ankles and shake balled fists or give them the finger when kicked; the bat-flock stairwell; the broom closet in which a mummy mime-demanded they tell it what they thought of its mop-for-a-wig; the dining room where they were chased in circles around the massive table by the world's slowest Frankenstein monster, cursed with a dead smoker's lungs and a matching tendency to take cigarette breaks after every setback; the crowd of zombies only interested in their brains because they'd collectively forgotten the steps to the flashmob dance they thought they were meant to perform, and were hoping passers-by would have some good moves to share.

"The werewolf will pounce and proceed to lick and slobber all over your face, and generally drool obscene amounts," Loki was just explaining, when something crashed upstairs.

They froze.

"Found it," Jane said. She swallowed thickly, the red-faced exhilaration that had built as they progressed fading away.

"Yes." He sobered a bit. "Do you truly trust me to protect you, Jane?"

"Yeah."

"Then let me take the lead."

"Okay, nigh-unkillable space wizards first, I guess," she said, raising her umbrella. "But I'm right behind you."

"I would be truly honoured by your doing something stupid to avenge me."

"Oh, shut up. It's probably just a squatter from another dimension or something. I hope."

Loki led the way towards and up the nearest staircase leading to the attic, dismissing the clutch of ghosts he'd installed along the way with a gesture. The faint lights from the floor below faded as they ascended. After first ensuring that the edges of the door atop the stairs were blacked out with magic, he conjured balls of light and gestured for Jane to wait until their eyes had grown accustomed to them.

Then he flicked the door open and sprang forward, spreading the lights to all corners of the room. _"Hya!"_

Many tiny somethings scrabbled along the floorboards. Small shapes darted haphazardly through the attic. An ominous, rumbling yowl rose up.

Loki and Jane turned toward the source of the sound, his lights and her umbrella both raised, and saw –

"Kittens!" Jane squeaked.

Loki blinked.

Jane set aside her umbrella, took a single step forward, and all but fell to her knees, hand extended toward the tiny, cat-like creature glaring at them from beneath a pile of dusty furniture.

"Hey, kitties. Hi, mommy," she cooed. "Were you the ones making all that noise, huh? Were your babies playing and knocking things over? Hi, yeah, c'mere, I don't bite."

The undersized black cat-thing approached cautiously and sniffed Jane's fingers like she might explode any moment. Jane held perfectly still, barely breathing. When the creature eventually decided to butt its head up into her hand, she shot Loki a brilliant smile.

Jane stroked the first animal's head until it purred, and slowly, a half-dozen even tinier specimens in a variety of colours came creeping and bounding from their hiding places, trailing after their mother.

"Hi, hello, yes, hi," Jane kept cooing. "Hello, catties. Aww, you pretty kitties. Look at you."

"These are _cats?_ " Loki asked, flabbergasted.

Jane met his gaze, looking almost as confused as he felt. "You've never seen a cat before?"

"Of course I have. But not any this minuscule. Is that supposed to be an adult female? How will these little things ever pull a chariot?"

Jane laughed. "I don't know about chariots, but with the amount of ruckus they managed to cause up here, I bet they're already catching a lot of mice. Come here and help me get them downstairs before one of them buries itself under a mountain of old furniture. I'm gonna call the landlord, see if the kittens are spoken for yet. We're gonna adopt one of these little poltergeists."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "We are?"

"Mew!" a teeny little black kitten said from the vicinity of his feet. Sitting there all itty bitty and prim, it looked unmistakably smug, as if it knew what they were talking about and was thinking, "Yes, you are!"

"Yes we are," Jane translated for it. "And trust me, you're gonna love it. If you think Halloween's great, wait until you have your own Earth cat to keep you company _every day_."

Blinking up at him contentedly, the kitten raised one paw and hooked its little claws into Loki's trouser leg. Ah. Yes, she might be right, Loki thought.


End file.
